মিজো জনগোষ্ঠী
The Mizo people (Mizo: Mizo hnam) are an ethnic group native to north-eastern India, western Burma (Myanmar) and eastern Bangladesh; this term covers several ethnic peoples who speak various Kuki-Chin languages. The Mizos are a tribal hill peoples in the Indian state of Mizoram and its neighboring areas. All Mizo tribes and clans, in their folk legends, claim that Chhinlung/Sinlung/Khul, which means  cave in the Mizo language was the cradle of the Mizos. Thus, it's sometimes concluded that the Mizo people lived as cave dwellers at some point.

The present Indian state of Mizoram (literally "Mizoland") was called the Lushai Hills or Lushai District and was defined as an excluded area during the British Raj and a district of Assam in independent India. The people of the Lushai Hills demanded a distinct political territory when India achieved independence. Due to continued efforts by its people to gain autonomy, the national government approved Mizoram in 1972 as a Union Territory and in 1987 as a full-fledged state of the Republic of India.

As the people organized, they chose to identify as Mizo rather than by individual clan/tribe names. Thus, there is no Mizo Tribe as such, rather an umbrella name for all the different tribes. However, there still are some groups who refuse to be termed Mizo and caused minor conflicts between the two. These groups are mostly from outside the State Of Mizoram, living in the neighboring territories.

Of their languages, the most widely spoken is the "Mizo", which is the common language of all Mizos, which belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family. The state has one of the highest literacy rates in India, at more than 90%.
The official language is Mizo.

Etymology
The term Mizo is derived from two Mizo words: mi and zo. Mi in Mizo means 'person' or 'people'. The term zo has two meanings. According to one view, zo means 'highland'. Another meaning is 'cool' or 'crisp' (a sense/feeling of cool and refreshing air/environment of higher altitute, 'zo' is never used to denote all cool/cold temperature, the term for such temperature is 'vawt'). Hence, Mizo means highlanders or people living in high hills. The term Mizo has a broad ethnic classification of sub groups inhabiting the regions then knowns as Lushai Hills in India, Chin hills in Myanmar and Chittagong hills in Bangladesh. Mizo generally refers to those residing in Mizoram and various subroups of the Zo Family have joined and adopted Mizo while others have not.

Though the term Mizo is often used to name an overall ethnicity, it is an umbrella term to denote the various clans, such as the Hmar, Ralte, Lai, Lusei etc. A number of dialects are still spoken under the umbrella of Paite ; some of them are Mizo ṭawng (which is an official language of Mizoram), the Hmar languages,the Paite languages, the Lai languages, and the Pang languages.

References

External links
 Webindia123.com